|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
PROFILE
|
|
|
|
| First Name: Gary |
| Middle Name: Anthony James |
| Surname: Webb |
| Date of Birth: 8th March 1958 |
| Town of Birth: Chiswick, London, UK |
| Lives: Great Easton, Essex |
| Height: 1.70 metres (5' 8") |
| Eye Colour: brown/green |
| Present Car: TVR Cerbera |
| Previous Groups: Crimson Lake, Black Gold,
Mean Street, The Lazers, Tubeway Army |
| Favourite Food: hotdogs, burger 'n' chips,
bacon butties |
| Favourite Drink: coke |
| Favourite Record: "closer" by Nine
Inch Nails |
| Hobbies: speedboats, go-karting,
candle-making, flying, fast cars, |
| Likes: Family
life |
| Dislikes: crowds |
| Marital
Status: married to Gemma |
| Instruments: guitar and keyboards mainly and
some very basic bass guitar. |
|
|
|
|
 |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
ELECTROPOP GODFATHER
|
|
|
Gary Numan (born Gary Anthony James Webb on March 8, 1958, in
Hammersmith, West London) is an English singer, composer, musician and
electropop pioneer. He is widely remembered for his chart-topping 1979
hit "Cars". Numan's signature style combines gloomy themes of
depersonalization and alienation accompanied by energetic synthesizer
work.
| Career |
After education at Slough Grammar School, Numan
rose to prominence at the tail end of the 1970s, initially
recording under the band name Tubeway Army. After recording an
album's worth of punk-influenced demo tapes (released in 1984 as
The Plan), he was signed by Beggars Banquet Records in 1978 and
quickly released two singles, "That's Too Bad" and
"Bombers", neither of which charted. A self-titled, New
Wave-oriented debut album later that same year sold out its
limited run and introduced Numan's fascination with dystopian
science fiction and, more importantly, synthesizers. Tubeway
Army's third single, the cinematic "Down in the Park"
(1979) also failed to chart but it would prove to be one of
Numan's most enduring and oft-covered songs; a live version of it
can also be seen in the movie Urgh! A Music War. After exposure in
a television advertisement for Lee Cooper jeans with the jingle
"Don't be a dummy", Tubeway Army released the single
"Are 'Friends' Electric?" in May 1979. The single took
seven weeks before it finally reached #1 at the end of June; the
parent album Replicas simultaneously climbing to #1 in the album
charts.
A few months later he repeated the feat with "Cars",
which became a Top 10 hit in America in 1980 as well, and the 1979
album The Pleasure Principle, both released under Numan's own
(assumed) name, which he had plucked from an advert in the
"Yellow Pages". Topping both single and album charts
simultaneously was noteworthy enough; doing so twice in the space
of six months was astonishing. A sell-out tour ('The Touring
Principle') followed; the concert video it spawned is often cited
as the first full-length commercial music video release. The
Pleasure Principle was a rock album with no guitars; instead,
Numan used synthesisers fed through guitar effects pedals to
achieve a phased, metallic tone. Self-produced in a fortnight for
very little money, The Pleasure Principle sounded like nothing
else, and remains one of Numan's most highly-regarded efforts
today. A second single from the album, "Complex", made
it to #6 in the UK charts.
Numan was pop music's first synthesizer star. He wore costumes and
make-up and openly proclaimed his influences: David Bowie, Marc
Bolan and contemporary electronic acts such as John Foxx's
Ultravox. On stage his persona came across as aloof, alien and
androgynous; in interviews, however, his disarmingly open manner
caught many by surprise. Numan's great popularity and unabashed
admiration of wealth alienated critics and even some fellow
musicians; Yes recorded a sardonic song about him, "White
Car," for their 1980 album Drama, a reaction to his habit of
tearing around London in the white Chevrolet Corvette given to him
by Beggars Banquet. His one-time idol, David Bowie, refused to
appear with Numan on an episode of The Kenny Everett Video Show on
which both were scheduled to perform. Numan bewildered the music
press. He was a driven, creative, troubled 21-year-old loner who
still lived with his parents. He was not punk. He was not quite
New Romantic either, and retrospectives of the period tended to
ignore him and his influence. Yet, during this period, Numan
generated an army of fans calling themselves Numanoids, enough of
whom would remain loyal to carry him through the latter half of
the 1980s, when his fortunes began to fall precipitously (even
before this time, and throughout his commercial peak, Numan was
constantly vilified and ridiculed by the UK music press).
|
| 1980s |
In 1980 Numan again topped the album charts with
Telekon, although the concurrent singles "We Are Glass",
"I Die: You Die" and "This Wreckage" only
reached #5, #6 and #20, respectively. The final studio album of
what Numan retrospectively termed the "Machine" section
of his career,[3] Telekon reintroduced guitars to Numan's music
and featured a wider range of synthesisers. The same year he
embarked on his second major tour ("The Teletour") with
an even more elaborate stage show than The Touring Principle the
previous year. Although considered a success, Numan claimed the
tour actually lost him a great deal of money because of the vast
expense in mounting it. By this time he was weary of the pressures
of fame and announced his retirement from touring with a series of
sell-out concerts at Wembley Arena in April 1981, supported by
Alternative musician Nash the Slash and Shock, a
rock/mime/burlesque/music troupe whose members included Barbie
Wilde, Tik and Tok and Carole Caplin. The decision to retire would
be short-lived – in his autobiography he recalls walking out
onto an empty stage after his final concerts and thinking,
"What the fuck have I done?" – but it would have a
fateful effect on his career, as Numan found the fickle pop
audience quickly turned its attention to other artists.
Turning his back on electropop, Numan experimented instead with
jazz, funk and ethereal, rhythmic pop. His career quickly
nosedived, eclipsed initially by Adam Ant, and later by Duran
Duran, Culture Club, and Depeche Mode. He spent the decade in a
creative malaise, trying to recapture his former chart glory with
less distinguished albums some of which were stylistically
derivative of artists like Robert Palmer and Prince. Each album
saw a new "image", none of which captured the public's
imagination to nearly the same extent as the lonely android of the
late 1970s. His penchant for sharp suits and hats seemed faintly
outmoded, while his later adoption of leather and shades seemed
opportunistic.
Numan had an embarrassing episode in 1981 involving his hobby of
flying, which briefly put him in the UK news. Attempting a
round-the-world flight in a twin engined Piper Navajo, Numan had
to make a forced landing (reported in the press as an outright
crash) in India, where he was arrested on suspicion of smuggling
and espionage. Contrary to news stories at the time, Numan was not
piloting the plane himself during the landing. During the late
1980s, he had his life threatened on several occasions by a
mysterious stalker.
Numan's first album after his farewell concerts, the bleak,
atmospheric and experimental Dance (1981), charted as high as #3
on the UK charts, but it dropped out of the charts after only
eight weeks; it featured guests Mick Karn (bass, saxophone) and
Rob Dean (guitar) of Japan, Roger Mason (keyboards) of Models and
Roger Taylor (drums) of Queen. The more upbeat and danceable I,
Assassin (1982) fared less well than Dance: despite spawning three
Top 20 singles, the album peaked at #8 and dropped out of the
charts after six weeks. Numan supported the album with a concert
tour in America in late 1982 (his first series of live shows since
his farewell at Wembley). Warriors (1983) further developed
Numan's jazz-influenced style and featured contributions from
avant-garde musician Bill Nelson (who fell out with Numan during
recording and chose to be uncredited as the album's co-producer)
and saxophonist Dick Morrissey (who would play on most of Numan's
albums until 1991). The album peaked at #12 and, like I, Assassin,
spent six weeks in the charts. Warriors was the last album Numan
recorded for Beggars Banquet Records, and was supported by a
40-date UK tour (again with support from robotic mime and music
duo Tik and Tok) -- Numan's first live tour in the UK since his
Wembley appearances in 1981. Numan's look for the album artwork
and tour was a black leather costume against a sci-fi
post-apocalyptic backdrop, but this latest image change was
scorned by the music press despite the sell-out tour and
aggressive vibrancy of his new sound.
Now battling against the increasing public perception that he was
a spent force, Numan issued a series of albums and singles on his
own record label, Numa. The first such album, 1984’s Berserker
was also notable for being Numan's first foray into music
computers/samplers, in this case the PPG Wave. Berserker moved
away from the fluid, fretless sound that characterised Numan's
previous three albums, featuring instead harder-edged electric
bass and drum sounds. The album was also accompanied by a striking
blue-and-white visual image, a tour and a live album/video, but it
divided critics and fans and commercially was Numan’s least
successful release to that date. 1984 also saw the death of Paul
Gardiner, who was Numan's bassist and friend since his Tubeway
Army days. Numan's next album, The Fury (1985), charted slightly
higher than Berserker, and featured another new image of white
suit and red bow tie. To date, The Fury is the last Numan album to
crack the British Top 30.
Collaborations with Bill Sharpe of Shakatak helped little, though
one single the duo recorded, "Change Your Mind", did see
chart action, reaching #17 in Britain. Numa Records, which had
been launched in a flurry of idealistic excitement, folded after
the release of Numan's Strange Charm album (1986). In addition to
Numa's commercial failure, a lack of radio play (his records were
removed from the BBC Radio 1 playlist) and sales drained the
fortune (he estimated £4.5 million) Numan had amassed in the late
1970s. Numan signed to IRS Records and his final studio album of
the 80s, the edgy, industrial-funk Metal Rhythm (1988) found
favour with fans and scored some positive reviews in the UK music
press, but it sold poorly. Metal Rhythm's sales were arguably
confounded by the lack of strong promotion and IRS's inappropriate
choices of singles (the record label also changed the album's
title to New Anger, changed the album colour shade from black to
blue, and remixed several of its tracks for its American release
against Numan's wishes). 1989 saw the release of the Sharpe +
Numan album Automatic. A more lightweight-pop effort than Numan's
solo albums, Automatic fared less well than Metal Rhythm (and has
been out of print since its initial release).
|
| 1990s |
| In 1991, Numan ventured into film-scoring by
co-composing the music for The Unborn with Michael R. Smith (the
score was later released as an instrumental album in 1995, Human).
After Outland (1991), another critical and commercial
disappointment and his second and last studio album with IRS,
Numan reactivated Numa Records, under which he would release his
next two albums. However, even Numan considers his 1992 Machine +
Soul, a misguided attempt at a purely commercial release recorded
solely to pay off debts, a career low point. The album sold only a
few thousand copies. By 1994, Numan decided to stop attempting to
crack the pop market and concentrate instead on exploring more
personal themes, including his vocal atheism. His future wife
Gemma encouraged him to strip away the influences of the previous
years. Numan re-evaluated his career and went in a harsher, more
industrial direction with his songwriting on the album Sacrifice;
for the first time, he played almost all the instruments himself.
The move was critically well-received, as Numan's harder and
darker sound emerged just as Numan-influenced bands like Nine Inch
Nails were enjoying their first rush of fame. The influence was
two-way; Numan claimed that Nine Inch Nails' song
"Closer" is his favourite hit single of all time, and
influenced his music. Sacrifice was the last album Numan made
before shutting down Numa Records permanently. His next two
albums, Exile (1997) and Pure (2000), restored Numan's critical
reputation; Numan even toured the U.S. in support of Exile, his
first stateside concerts since the early 1980s.
|
| Resurrection
of career |
After years of ridicule in the press, Numan found
himself cited as "the godfather of electronic music" and
an artist respected by his peers, with such musicians as Dave
Grohl (of Foo Fighters and Nirvana), Trent Reznor (of Nine Inch
Nails), Marilyn Manson and the band Nancy Boy proclaiming his work
an influence and recording cover versions of old Numan hits. The
band Basement Jaxx had a huge hit in 2002 with "Where's Your
Head At?", which relied on a sample of Numan's
"M.E." - from The Pleasure Principle - for its hook.
Fear Factory produced a cover of "Cars" featuring a
guest appearance by Numan. Nine Inch Nails covered the song
"Metal" on their album Things Falling Apart, as did
Afrika Bambaataa (with Numan himself) on Dark Matter Moving at the
Speed of Light. "Cars" remains Numan's most enduring
song; it was a hit again in 1987 and 1996, in the latter case
thanks to an appearance in an advert for Carling beer. In 2000 DJ
Armand Van Helden sampled the track and mixed it up in his single
"Koochy" which conquered the dancefloors. In 2002, UK
pop trio Sugababes scored a #1 with "Freak Like Me" - a
mashup of Adina Howard's "Freak Like Me" and "Are
Friends Electric" from Numan's Tubeway Army. Other musicians
who have sung Numan's praises in recent years include Beck, Grant
Nicholas, Tricky, Damon Albarn, Jarvis Cocker, Queens of the Stone
Age, David Bowie, and The Smashing Pumpkins (whose album
"Siamese Dream" is based on the title of the Numan song
"A Dream of Siam" from his 1982 album I,Assassin).
Afrika Bambaataa has also talked about the influence of Numan's
music on the fledgling American DJ scene: "In the late 70s
and early 80s Gary had the rhythms that DJs wanted to get hold of
and people waited for his records on the dance floor."
"Cars" was also featured on the soundtrack for the
blockbuster 2002 PlayStation 2 videogame Grand Theft Auto: Vice
City as part of the New Wave radio station Wave 103, although it
did not appear on the soundtrack CD release for the game.
"Are Friends Electric" appeared on EA's game Need For
Speed: Carbon in 2006.
In 2002, Numan enjoyed chart success once again with the single
"Rip", reaching #29 in the UK chart and in 2003 with the
Gary Numan vs Rico single "Crazier" which reached #13 in
the UK chart. Rico also worked on the remix album Hybrid which
featured reworkings of older songs in a more contemporary
industrial style. 2003 also saw Gary Numan performing the vocals
on a track named "Pray For You" on the Plump DJs album
"Eargasm" which was very well received. In 2004 Numan
took control of his own business affairs again, launching the
label Mortal Records and releasing a series of live DVDs as a
precursor to a critically well-received new studio album, Jagged,
which was released on 13 March 2006. An album launch gig took
place at The Forum, London on 18 March followed by UK, European
and US tours in support of the release. Numan also launched a
Jagged website to showcase the new album, and made plans to have
his 1981 farewell concert (previously released as Micromusic on
VHS) issued on DVD by November 2006 as well as releasing the DVD
version of the Jagged album launch gig. Numan undertook a Telekon
'Classic Album' tour in the UK in December 2006, primarily to
appease his more nostalgic fans and also to reserve his regular
tours for more contemporary material.
|
| Personal
life |
Numan married a member of his own fan club, Gemma
O'Neill. In 2003, after a series of miscarriages and IVF attempts,
the couple had their first child, Raven. In 2005 they had a second
daughter, Persia. In March 2007 the couple had their third child,
Echo.
He published his autobiography, Praying to the Aliens, in 1997
(updated edition 1998), in collaboration with Steve Malins (Malins
also wrote the liner notes for most of the CD reissues of Numan's
albums in the late 1990s, as well as executive producing the
Hybrid album in 2003). Numan has recently moved to East Sussex
from Essex.
|
| Flying |
| Numan is known for his love of flying and has owned
several aircraft, most famously, since 1984, a radial-engined
Harvard WW2 trainer often seen in formation aerobatic displays.
Numan was a passenger in one of these aircraft when it made an
emergency landing on a main road in England, in 1981. This came
shortly after successfully flying around the world, during which
he was briefly imprisoned in India on suspicion of spying. His
aerobatic flying career is also noted on the BBC TV series The
Mighty Boosh, whose character Vince Noir (Noel Fielding) is a huge
Numan fan, with a "Cars" ringtone on his mobile phone.
Numan has recently stated that he likes to go sailing from time to
time. Numan's brother is also a pilot and has flown aircraft such
as the Bristol Blenheim at airshows.
|
| Asperger
syndrome |
Gemma apparently first recognised Numan as having a
mild form of Asperger syndrome. She has discussed this, and also
how she and Gary met, in at least one UK women's magazine. In the
April 29, 2001 edition of The Sunday Times magazine, Numan stated:
"Polite conversation has never been one of my strong points.
Just recently I actually found out that I'd got a mild form of
Asperger's Syndrome which basically means I have trouble
interacting with people. For years, I couldn't understand why
people thought I was arrogant, but now it all makes a bit more
sense."
In an interview for Metro he said:
"It was suggested I had it when I was younger but no one knew
much about it then. I've read a lot about it since and I fulfil
some of the diagnostic criteria but not others. I probably have a
mild form...for example, if people came over for dinner and I saw
a magazine I hadn't read, I'd pick it up, sit in the corner and
read it - which I now know is wrong...I have an obsessive focus
when it comes to pushing forward with my music. I don't get
crushed by disappointment. I don't do this for the acclaim,
luckily...because of Asperger I see the world as a hostile
place...it feeds into my style of songwriting completely. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
